Fifth-Grade Inventors Put Big Ideas to the Test : Education: Thousand Oaks students concoct devices from a feeding dish for tall dogs to ‘Kittie Stickie’ for competition.

The two brown and gray rats that formed the engine of Eric Kenna’s invention weren’t cooperating. The rats were supposed to race on a small metal treadmill, generating electricity to power a tiny light bulb. Instead, they lodged their snouts between the bars of the cage and sniffed at Kenna and the Weathersfield Elementary School teachers nearby.

The bulb didn’t light, so Kenna had to explain to the teachers how his invention, called the Hamster Gerbil Generator, should work.

“This is only a small one,” Kenna said. “You could have [powered] cities with these things.”

Kenna was among about 88 fifth-graders at the Thousand Oaks school participating Monday in the “Invent America!” competition. The contest, sponsored by the nonprofit U.S. Patent Model Foundation, teaches students to find practical solutions to common problems, said teacher Deanna Hackman.

“I’ve had kids come back to me and say, ‘Ever since I made that invention, whenever I run into a problem, I think, ‘What can I do to change this around?’ ” she said.

Students entering the contest must first find a problem to solve. Slices of pizza going stale in the fridge? Dirty diapers smelling up the house? Anything is fair game.

Each would-be inventor must then devise an original solution to the problem, look through magazines and catalogues to make sure the proposed invention doesn’t already exist, and get feedback from people who might use the invention. Finally, contestants build models of their ideas.

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A panel of five judges roamed the school cafeteria Monday where inventions had been set up, quizzing students on their entries. Some of the models actually worked.

Kimberly Hart placed a flat piece of plastic with a sticky surface in front of the entrance to a cat litter box. The Kittie Stickie trapped litter and dust spilling out of the box.

Other models illustrated ideas. Philip Koumvakolis lacked the technical expertise to build a Warmbrella--an umbrella with batteries in the handle and wires along the spokes to radiate heat. So he rigged string along the spokes of an ordinary umbrella to help judges picture his idea.

Some of the creations took judge Daphne Wells by surprise. The fifth-grade teacher pointed to a blue, plastic dog dish sitting on a base 25 inches high. Inventor Shaun Castonguay, she said, had read that large dogs develop circulation problems when they constantly stoop to eat.

“That’s exactly what you want, a child who gets inspired and does some original research,” she said.

By 11 a.m., the judges had selected the invention they thought most creative, practical and marketable. They chose a device, made by Tara Khonsari, for pouring bird food into a dish inside a bird cage without opening the cage door. The device, attached to the cage, has two bins separated by sliding partition. The food, poured from the outside, slides to the inside bin when the partition is lifted.

Khonsari got the idea from watching her cockatiel, Sammy. “My bird, he flew out of the cage and he hit the wall,” she said. “I thought, ‘I need to feed him, I’ll make this. It’s easy.’ ”

She received a trophy and T-shirt donated by the local Kiwanis Club and a one-year membership in Inventors Workshop International, an organization that provides advice and encouragement to inventors. Her creation will be entered in a national Invent America! contest in Alexandria, Va., later this year, Hackman said.

Eight runners-up also won T-shirts and certificates.

Wells, who teaches science, said the contest showed her what students could do when acting on little but their own thoughts.

“When I come in here, I see all this creativity, which is what I love about children,” she said.